


Strawberries and Cigarettes

by turningofthemoon



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Forehead Kisses, Kissing, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Richie Tozier, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 10:01:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20872367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turningofthemoon/pseuds/turningofthemoon
Summary: Eddie is kissing him and it tastes like strawberries and cigarettes, like Richie’s bad habits and Eddie’s compulsive grooming and it tastes like hope and love and the future. “I love you” He blurts the second he gets his breath back, quiet into the sliver of space between them.-------A fix-it fit that is mostly in Richie's head, spanning parts of his childhood, the the events of the new movie, and the time between.





	Strawberries and Cigarettes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Troye Sivan's amazing Strawberries & Cigarettes

Memory can be a funny thing, a fickle thing. It could erase a lot of things from their minds, leave blanks and not raise questions, have the Losers Club only able to tell people that they’re from a small town in Maine, not the name of it, or the names of their friends, or what their childhood was like. But It couldn’t keep everything from them.

It could make Bill stop stuttering, could make him forget the horror of Georgie’s disappearance and the empty place in his heart and his home - but It couldn’t take away Bill’s intimate knowledge that something was lurking in dark corners and the feeling of a fear so great, so nameless, that you were paralyzed. 

Ben was lucky that he hung onto a physical reminder, so It couldn’t take Bev from him the way it took the memory of being accepted for who he was, without caveats, It could still take a lot from Ben though. It could take the fiery shade of Bev’s hair, the sparkling blue of her eyes, and the delight in her laugh at the antics of the boys in her life. 

And for Bev, It could take her feelings of strength, her memory of how it felt to stand up to her father, the knowledge deep in her bones that she was powerful. Somewhere deep in her mind, however, remained the postcard, “January embers.” She changed a lot of things about herself, about her appearance after she left Derry - never her hair. She couldn’t tell you why, she would just shrug if you asked her, but in her mind there was a feeling that it was exactly as it should be - winter fire. 

Stan could lose the feeling of an internal fuck it, and his speech at his bar mitzvah, and Richie’s little cheer before his mother yanked him back into his seat. But he could cling to the faintest reminders of laughter, he could put together his puzzles and watch the birds and faintly hear the sounds of laughter, a half-heard memory of his friends poking fun with only love in their hearts. He could still shudder, for no reason at all, at paintings in dark rooms. 

Richie could forget constantly hearing “beep-beep,” jokes mainly at the expense of Eddie’s mother, he could forget shaking fingers carving initials into the Kissing Bridge, he could forget the feeling of a baseball hat in his hands, swinging harder than her ever had in his life. But there was always something about a fanny pack, about strawberries, about short boys with dark hair. Not that he would admit any of those things, he may have forgotten who made him look twice at slight man in stupidly short shorts, but he couldn’t erase the taunting and slurs and shoves and - and he wasn’t gay. Not to anyone but himself. 

Eddie, always sharp and clean and strong. Eddie could forget the words on his cast, but not the cast itself. He could remember his deep fear of illness and injury, but not why the word “gazebos” always made the corner of his mouth tick up. He could give you a million reasons why you should never smoke cigarettes, why they’re the worst and disgusting. But he couldn’t tell you why he knew the taste of them on his tongue and why he secretly loved it. He could tell you all about his wife and his marriage and tell you he was happy, but he couldn’t tell you why his stomach dropped at seeing stand up specials suggested on his Netflix, why he always felt a little breathless at tall men with curly hair and glasses.

As for Mike...Mike was the luckiest and the worst off of all of them. Mike could remember each and every one of his friends. He could remember the rock war, and the way Richie would make terrible jokes but always backed off at the first instance of “beep-beep.” He could hear Bill shouting “Hi-yo, Silver” filled with glee, and never stuttering once. Each and every one of them remained in his heart, in his memories - as did the bone-deep fear. The problem was, he was the loneliest of them all, feeling the holes they left behind more acutely than anyone else.

Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier was a stand up comedian. He was snarky and rude and could crack a joke at the worst moment...or really any moment. He was not a man that anyone associated with earnestness, with sentimentality, with an unabashed and unironic feeling. But he could be that person, he just chose to hide it because no one wanted that from him. Not really. He had his manager, the other comedians on the circuit, people he hung out with but not...not friends. Not like he used to, even if he didn’t know that.

Sometimes, when he was feeling wistful for a place, for a life he had no recollection of, he would go out to the beach at ass o’clock in the morning and watch the sunrise over the waves and the sand. It wasn’t the same was it was on the East Coast, that much he certainly could remember, but it was beautiful in its own way. He would sit there on the sand, alone and quiet (another word no one would dare call him) and work his way through a pack of cigarettes, the taste of strawberries on his tongue for no reason at all. He would always taste it strongest after the first one, and chain the rest of them, chasing the taste in the hopes it would come stronger. He never told anyone about these moments, because, you know, pathetic much? But these were the times Richie was most acutely aware of how fucking lonely he was. These were the times he longed for someone by his side, the times he cursed himself internally for taking home a string of short brunette girls, knowing each and every time that it would be fucking empty and unsatisfying for him, and just bad for them, at best.

And by the time he burned the last one down to the filter, feeling it singeing his fingers ever so slightly, the taste of strawberries was long gone and sometimes, the worst times, he would be crying. He couldn’t tell you why, not that he would tell anyone at all, but he was just so fucking sad and he didn’t know why. So he would sit there, the sun coming up over the horizon, dirty glasses pushed up into his fucking rat’s nest of curls, his head in his hands just sobbing. Joggers would stop and look at him, but the few times they asked if he was okay, he would just shoot them a thumbs-up with one hand, wiping his tears with the other.

Eventually, when the sun was all the way up, he would run his sleeve over his face, shake out his face and stand up. He would go back to his life, practice his mediocre set of jokes he didn’t even write, drink too much, smoke too much, and brush past the strawberry chapstick at the grocery store check out, eyes lingering a second too long for no reason he could put his finger on.

After what felt like too fucking many lifetimes of this, he got a call before his show. Mike. Mike. It didn’t all come back, not all at once, but enough to send him to the fire escape, to make him hurl his shitty lunch and need a goddamn glass of bourbon. He almost asked his agent if it was some shitty new brand from a hipster company who put strawberries in it - but something stopped him.

The city was a dirty fucking place. The subway was always disgusting, homeless people on every corner wearing the same clothes for god only knows how long, it was a fucking cesspool on the best days, and even worse when it got hot. Crowds around every corner, gawking at the same buildings he walked by every fucking day, bringing diseases from all over the world to people with no immunity to speak of. The worst, the fucking worst, was how many people smoked - seriously fuck hipsters with their American Spirits and old men with their Marboro Reds. Didn’t they know about lung cancer and COPD and how it would rot their teeth and stain their fingers and make their kisses taste of ash? Which he knew because...because he just did, arlight? 

New York made Eddie’s stomach churn constantly, but his mother had moved him out here before his senior year of high school, it’s where he met Myra and where his job wanted him to stay. So he did. He stayed and he worked and he went home to Myra and she doted on him, reminding him to take his pills, to bring his inhaler and his back-up inhaler, chiding him when he ran low on hand sanitizer and when he came home late because he just needed a fucking minute of peace and quiet. 

He was happy, or so he would say if you asked him. He was good at his job, steadily climbing the corporate ladder because it was what he was supposed to do, spending his days telling people about each and every danger that touched their lives without ever wondering if there was more. If there was something missing from his life. He drove a big flashy Cadillac because his job gave it to him, he puffed his inhaler at the slightest tightening in his chest, he made love to Myra once every few months when she asked, kissed her on the cheek to dodge the germs he knew lingered in the human mouth.

And sometimes when he ran into the pharmacy for a refill on any one of his twenty prescriptions, he would see the cigarettes behind the cashier, and he would never tell Myra, but he would grab a pack, always at random, because he had no idea what he was looking for. He would never tell anyone, but he would sit in his car on his lunch break, and he would smoke one, coughing his way through it, regretting it the whole time, but feeling something somewhere deep down in his soul finally be soothed at the lingering taste on his tongue. And he would feel like an idiot afterwards, throw the pack out, brush his teeth and throw on extra cologne and use his hand sanitizer and swipe his strawberry chapstick over his lips. And he would forget, for a while, and do it again after a month or six or even a whole year.

The call from Mike came on the same day as one of these weird psychotic breaks, and like a whole lot of other things, he wouldn’t ever tell Myra, but he was almost grateful when he crashed his car. He remembered how good an adrenaline rush felt, how it felt to be free and not scared and to hear his friend’s voice and he couldn’t remember everything about Derry, but at least he could remember the name and he could picture Mike’s face with his earnest eyes and kind smile. He could remember how it felt to be a loser all over again. How it actually felt to be loved.

Richie walks into the restaurant, sees the gong and just fucking has to bang it because - how could he not? And he still can’t remember everything, but seeing the other losers roll their eyes at him brings a contentment to his stomach like he’s never felt before, or rather, like he hasn’t felt in nearly 27 years. It’s starting to come back, in bits and pieces, and he can remember Eddie’s little fanny pack, and how he always used to call him Eds and he can’t resist poking fun at him, because that feels right in the same way that making his friends laugh did. 

“Wait you got married? What, like to a woman?” He asks, incredulous and teasing, just to see his reaction. It certainly doesn’t disappoint, the way he snaps back and claps back just as naturally. He delights in this, in the banter and the teasing and the way it brings more and more of their childhood back.

And yeah, he’s not gonna fucking pretend he’s happy when the nasty whatever the fucks come crawling out of the fortune cookies, or when he can remember more and more about It. About Henry Bowers and fucking cliche but humiliating swirlies and being shoved into lockers. But all at once, when they’re piling into their cars and heading back to the townhouse, he puts his keys into the ignition and gets hit with the strongest memory of all.

He’s sixteen again. He’s sitting on the ledge by quarry, Eddie’s hand in his, their feet dangling over the edge. He feels small and young and scared. He’s not scared of It. It is long gone, the kind of thing they all have nightmares about but wake up and remember that they’re okay. Yeah, he spends most nights in Eddie’s bed, sneaking in by climbing the tree. Eddie always keeps the window open just a crack, even in the dead of winter with the snow falling fast, it’s enough to make his room frigid but also enough for Richie to wiggle his fingers into and lift it up, slipping in with the kind of ease that comes from experience. 

They don’t talk much on these frequent impromptu sleepovers, but they both sleep so much better squished into Eddie’s tiny bed, twin heartbeats slowing until they fall asleep, Richie’s face buried in Eddie’s hair, and Eddie’s fingers twined with Richie’s. 

Richie is usually the first to wake up, a quirk no one expects of him but an unfortunate result of his ADHD. He wakes slowly, peacefully, and breathes deep. Eddie always smells so nice, a result of his incessant cleaning, and it’s something Richie will never not make fun of, but secretly enjoy, just like his dumb shorts and his stupid fanny packs. They’re fifteen the first time that Richie wakes up and kisses Eddie’s forehead.

“Whassat?” Eddie mumbles quietly, long lashes fluttering as he blinks awake, looking blearily up at Richie.

“Um, nothing you know, just practicing for your mom!” He covers lamely, heartbeat speeding until he fears it’s going to break out of his chest. He’s been so good, he thought, minor moments of weakness all occurring in private, like his stupid carving on the bridge. No one knows about his crush, not even Bill who tells all his stupidest stuff to.

“S’nice, you can do it.” His face is burrowing deeper into Richie’s chest, like it always does when he’s sleepy, so he can’t see the way Richie’s cheeks burn bright red and the way his mouth quirks before he does it again.

And then they’re back at the quarry, sixteen and holding hands and that’s just about as far as they’ve ever gone. Forehead kisses and cuddling and hand holding. Because they’re sixteen and they’re in fucking Derry, so everything do has to be done in secret. But Eddie is moving today. He’s going all the way to fucking New York City because his mother swears the doctors in Derry don’t know anything and that her little boy is so sick, so even though Eddie knows it’s bullshit, knows that she wants to keep him from his “dirty little friends,” there’s nothing he can do about it. Richie is smoking, because he’s sixteen and it makes him feel cool, and it calms his nerves. Eddie is reapplying his chapstick for the millionth time because it does the same for him.

“I promise I won’t forget you, Richie. I’ll write. Every week. And you better fucking answer, Trashmouth. Or I’ll write Mike and make him kick your ass.” He’s smiling, but it’s a sad kind of smile, and he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know that by the time he unpacks and settles in, Richie will be gone. He doesn’t know that his first boyfriend, his only boyfriend, his first and only love, will be stolen from him before the week is out.

“I’ll write you back, Eds, my little Eddie Spa-” The sentence never makes it all the way out, because Eddie is kissing him and it tastes like strawberries and cigarettes, like Richie’s bad habits and Eddie’s compulsive grooming and it tastes like hope and love and the future. “I love you” He blurts the second he gets his breath back, quiet into the sliver of space between them.  
“I love you too, dumbass.” Eddie stands up, runs his fingers through Richie’s tangled up curls, and walks away. If he stays any longer, he’ll start crying and try to stay and his mother will drag him kicking and screaming and it’ll be worse. So he walks away. Neither of them realize it’s the last words they’ll say to each other for twenty plus years, but if they did know...they wouldn’t have changed that moment for anything.

Richie’s in his car keys in the ignition just a second after he placed them there. Eddie is in the car next to his, pulling away smoothly and jesus fuck does that explain a lot. His head drops to the steering wheel and he groans for a moment. He doesn’t have the time or energy or brain power to deal with it, so he sits back up and turns the keys and drives back to the townhouse, because fuck that.

And he deals with everything else, as best as he can, plans to get the fuck out of there but then they have to stay and he deals with that too, with the clubhouse and the fucking gaping hole Stan left in their hearts, in their group. He deals with it the only way he knows how to, by cracking jokes and making everyone roll their eyes. He goes to get his token, a literal one in his case, and he literally fucking murders Henry Bowers and how the actual fuck is he supposed to explain that to the cops? He throws up, because, slamming an axe into the man who made him so afraid feels kind of awesome but that noise and the blood are just...no. When he finds out later that the fucker stabbed Eddie in the fucking face he feels a lot less sick, and wants to do it all over again.

Then they end up back in the fucking sewers under Neibolt, and it’s like he’s a kid all over again, so young and so stupidly brave and so sure that they’re gonna kill the fucking thing.

When Mike’s ritual turns out to be complete bullshit, and they’re running, he has to be at least a little grateful that he ended up running in the same direction as Eddie, all things considered. He has a moment of temporary insanity when they open the door marked “Not Scary at All” and there’s just a cute fucking dog, where he pictures himself and Eddie in his apartment, curled up under a blanket watching a dumb movie and arguing over nothing, a tiny little puffball of a dog on their feet. But he snaps back into himself when it turns into some ungodly thing, and at least the fucking tentacle retracted and he can hear someone else screaming so he runs toward the screaming, toward It. 

He feels brave. He feels each and every one of his 40 years as he rushes out. He feels the memory of Eddie’s hand in his, he tastes cheap stolen cigarettes and fucking strawberry chapstick. So he’s brave, and a little stupid, but he’s gotta save Mike. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do to save one of his friends, he’s already lost Stan and he’s not losing anyone else.

“Hey, fuckface! You wanna play Truth or Dare? Here's the truth: you're a sloppy bitch! Yeah, that's right! Let's dance! Yippee ki-yay, motherfu-” He’s glad he gets out a good one, but man does it suck when that stupid fucking clown catches him right in the deadlights. He knows that he’s in them, he knows he’s going to die, and he honestly can’t say he regrets it, he just regrets not being able to ask Eddie if he remembered too. If he still loved him.

And then he’s slamming into the ground, his head smacking the rock hard and he thinks it would hurt more if it wasn’t for the pure glee on Eddie’s face, telling him that It’s dead, that he killed it and he decides to be brave again, in what some would say is a foolish moment of confidence, considering that literally just almost died because he was being brave, but he grabs Eddie by the front of his dumb polo and yanks him down into a kiss.

It’s sloppy, it’s awkward and Eddie tastes like grey water and sweat and they both taste like blood. But it still tastes like strawberry chapstick and cheap cigarettes and it tastes like coming home.

He’s about to pull back, to apologize, to crack another stupid joke because clearly Eddie doesn’t remember - except Eddie’s kissing him back and fucking finally, there’s a gentle hand in his tangled curls and he instinctively rolls over on top of the still shorter man, the Eldritch horror behind them be damned, except a huge claw slams into the ground hard where they were just lying.

“K-k-kiss later, you f-f-fucking idots!” Bill shouts, rolling his eyes. And to be fair, that’s good advice.

“We’ll be fucking idiots later, Big Bill!” Richie snarks back, jumping to his feet and dragging a dazed Eddie up and pulling them both down into a relatively safer part of the cavern.

From there it’s a blur of the remaining members of the Losers Club pulling together a plan, bullying a clown to death, joining their hands and squishing the rotted heart of It until it falls to pieces and flutters up above them, and the deadlights are shrinking and fading and burning out like really shitty stars and their hands are all still entangled and he grins at Eddie, readying a quip when the fucking cavern starts to shake. 

“No rest for the fucking exhuasted and very gay,” he mutters as they swin and run and climb and fucking nope the fuck out of the caverns and sewers and house. But they make it, bruised and battered and tired, they stand together on the street, watching the house on the corner of Neibolt cave in on itself. They’re shoulder to shoulder. They’re covered in grime and sweat and blood and Eddie slips his hand into his own, squeezing gently and Richie kisses the top of his head and it’s okay.

They make it to the quarry, and the jump seems higher than it did when they were younger, but they all do it, and Bev and Ben are kissing, Mike and Bill are laughing, their eyes and shoulders lighter, and Stan is with them. He’s their in their memories and their thoughts and their hearts.  
Richie sits on a rock, lower half submerged in the water, examining the spiderweb crack in his glasses from when he dropped to the ground after the deadlights, and Eddie swims up to him, places his hands on Richie’s knees and shoots him a shy smile.

“So, Eds, what’s your plan from here?” He asks, looking down at the love of his childhood life, at the part of him that was missing his entire pathetic adult life, dreading the answer but smiling anyway.

“Is now a good time to tell you that I’ve had divorce papers hidden in my suitcase since I got the call from Mike?”

He coughs, blinking and shoving his dirty and cracked glasses onto his face so he can get a better look at Eddie’s face “I meant for dinner…” It’s a rare thing for Richie to be stunned speechless like this, and Eddie knows it, bursting out laughing as he gently shoves the taller man into the water.

After a moment, Richie resurfaces, splashing Eddie in retaliation, but Eddie is quick to dodge and lunge for Richie. As he prepares himself for whatever torment Eddie is going to give him, Richie closes his eyes - so he misses the soft smile Eddie is giving him as he cups his cheeks and gives him a soft kiss.

“I love you, you moron. My plan from here is to divorce my wife, and...and to come see what life is like on the West Coast.” He murmurs gently, watching as Richie’s big eyes open behind his water beaded lenses, and feeling himself blush as Richie nods emphatically, mouth agape.

“I…I love you too, Eds.” He stammers his reply, pulling the shorter man closer and kissing his forehead just like he did so many years ago. And suddenly he’s underwater because Eddie, ever the little shit, pushed him under in the middle of their moment. But he can’t even be mad because through the murky water and busted glasses, he can see Eddie’s laughter illuminating his face and he can hear the laughter of all of the Loser’s Club and he can even hear Stan joining in, and he’s okay. 

Richie is no longer lonely. His mouth tastes like strawberries and cigarettes. 

As it should.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first fic ever, but these boys done got to my heart in a major way. I have so much love for this fandom and all the amazing works you have created, it's the only reason I felt confident enough to finally do this!  
Much love to any and all fan works creators!


End file.
